Civil-Rights Advocates, Federal Official Square Off at House Committee Session

Washington--Representatives of the nation's largest civil-rights
advocacy groups have asked a House Judiciary subcommittee for a special
investigation to determine whether officials of the Reagan
Administration have failed to carry out their responsibilities under
the Constitution.

In addition, they asked the members of the Subcommittee on Civil and
Constitutional Rights to drastically reduce the budget of the Justice
Department's civil-rights division and to increase those of other
federal agencies responsible for the enforcement of civil-rights
laws.

William Bradford Reynolds, the assistant attorney general for civil
rights, said he was "shocked" by those suggestions and added that it
was "patently absurd" to denigrate the Administration's "strong,
vibrant, positive, and highly commendable civil-rights enforcement
record."

Representative Don Edwards, Democrat of California and chairman of
the panel, set the tone for the hearings by stating at the outset that
he was "deeply troubled by the dramatic shift in federal civil-rights
enforcement" under the Administration.

William Taylor, a civil-rights lawyer speaking on behalf of the
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, went one step further, calling
Mr. Reynolds "an unbending ideologue" who has "put his policy of
defiance of law into action."

He suggested that the subcommittee undertake a "special inquiry"
into the conduct of the department to determine "whether and in what
respects officials in the Justice Department have failed to carry out
their duties under the Constitution and the laws" of the country.

"If the chief law-enforcement agency of the United States may with
impunity trammel the rights of one group of citizens, then the rights
of all of us are in jeopardy," Mr. Taylor said.

'Department of Injustice'

"Our view is that the Department of Justice has become the
department of injustice as it relates to the victims of racial
discrimination,'' added Thomas I. Atkins, general counsel to the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The department, he added, "is engaged in a conspiracy against the
victims of racial discrimination."

"To give them more money to engage in more of the same would
implicate this committee and this Congress in that conspiracy," he
said.

Theodore M. Shaw, assistant counsel to the Legal Defense Fund Inc.,
told the subcommittee that he resigned from his position in the
department last year "because it had become apparent to me that the
department was no longer committed to effective enforcement of this
nation's civil-rights laws."

The legal-defense fund was formerly known as the naacp Legal Defense
and Education Fund.

"Legal opinions and recommendations of career civil-rights division
attorneys are no longer considered, and morale among the legal corps is
low," he said.

Mr. Reynolds, in defending the Administration's policies, said the
organizations' allegations and recommendations to the subcommittee
"stray far from reasoned advocacy."

In the area of school desegregation, he pointed out, it is unfair to
gauge the department's enforcement record by pointing to the number of
cases it has taken to court.

"The years are over when this division could come to this
subcommittee and laud itself for the number of case it filed," Mr.
Reynolds explained. "Most major metropolitan school districts are
already under court order. To measure enforcement today on case filings
is unfair."

He then pointed out that, to date, the department has filed one new
case, has followed through with four cases filed during the end of the
Carter Admininistration, has initiated eight new investigations, and
has negotiated 15 consent decrees.

"These are all long, complex, resource-draining efforts, yet no
credit is given," he said. "While there is much hand-wringing about
this change in course from forced busing to quality education, I know
there is strong support for this in Congress and in the courts. Let's
not throw around baseless and irresponsible charges."

Vol. 02, Issue 34

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